CBI (Hansard, 24 January 1977)

§ 16. Mr. Rooker
asked the Secretary of State for Industry when he next plans to meet the leaders of the CBI.

§ The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. Bob Cryer)
My right hon Friend the Secretary of State expects to meet CBI representatives at the next NEDC meeting on 2nd February.

§ Mr. Rooker
Will my hon. Friend ask his right hon. Friend to plead with the CBI to acquiesce in the Government's proposals on planning agreements? Is he aware that there is great suspicion on the Labour Benches that the Government have been nobbled on this issue? Will he confirm that the Department wants planning agreements and that there is no conspiracy in the Department of Industry against the open government that would come from them?

§ Mr. Cryer
I take my hon. Friend's point and I acknowledge his persistent concern about planning agreements. It is a concern that is entirely shared by the Department of Industry. All the Ministers in the Department of Industry are anxious to see as many planning agreements as 951 possible concluded as rapidly as possible. Urgent talks have been going ahead and have been continuing for some time about the desirability of bringing planning agreements to some sort of established conclusion. There is no doubt that the Department and the Government are disappointed by the lack of progress so far.

§ Mr. Hall-Davis
When the Secretary of State meets the CBI, the Bullock Committee will have reported. Will he, as the sponsoring Minister with responsibility for a great many major industries, undertake to discuss the report from a practical point of view? Does he accept that he has a responsibility to ensure that damage is not done to British industry in the pursuit of theoretically praiseworthy objectives that, practically, are very hard to achieve?

§ Mr. Cryer
I am disappointed that the CBI and other employer organisations have taken a rigid attitude to the advance information about the Bullock Committee's proposals. Surely it would have been much more constructive if they had recognised that there is a movement not only in this country but throughout Europe towards enabling working men and women to play a much greater part in decisions that affect their everyday lives, and that the notion that only a tiny section of the population should be able to make decisions in industry is a view that is being eroded. I hope that industry will take a much more constructive part and adopt a much more constructive attitude towards the extension of industrial democracy.

§ Mr. Moonman
Will my hon. Friend discuss with his right hon. Friend some of the possible Government responses to the suggestions made last week by Lord Plowden as a means of improving some of the relationships and the understanding between Government, Parliament and industry?

§ Mr. Cryer
I shall bring my right hon. Friend's attention to the point that my hon. Friend has made.

§ :Mr. Biffen
In the context of the forthcoming meeting, will the hon. Gentleman indicate whether it is the view of the Department that the current levels of profitability of industry and commerce are now satisfactory?

§ Mr. Cryer
I know that the hon. Gentleman does not expect me to produce a 952 thumbnail judgment at the Dispatch Box. This is a matter that we are constantly reviewing. One of the rewarding signs about the general situation in industry is that the most recent Department of Industry survey indicated that there would be an increase in investment of between 10 per cent. and 15 per cent. The hon. Gentleman may draw his own conclusions from that.

§ Mr. Adley
Is not the Minister aware that the Bullock Report has very little to do with industrial democracy? Is it not, therefore, of no surprise that the view of the CBI and of many other people in industry of the Bullock Report and its impartiality has everything to do with the composition of the team that wrote the report and its terms of reference? Is it not ludicrous to expect a committee comprising Jack Jones and Clive Jenkins among others to produce an impartial report? It is just about as impartial as asking a penguin whether he will give up swimming.

§ Mr. Cryer
The House is used to the dramatic observations of the hon. Gentleman and the nonsense he churns out. If the Bullock Committee has not been concerned with industrial democracy, it has been labouring under a grave misapprehension over the past few months when it has been working hard receiving evidence from organisations, the views of a large number of which the hon. Gentleman would strongly support, and those organisations must also have been labouring under a misapprehension. The Bullock Report is an important and major step forward in the discussion and development of industrial democracy. If the hon. Gentleman and his companions on the Opposition Benches continue to hide their heads in the sand about industrial democracy, it is their affair, but the working men and women of the country look forward to the development of industrial democracy on which the Bullock Committee reported.